The people were staring at him very strangely.

Some from other islands Hiccup had visited had glanced at Hiccup's dragon-like flightsuit in confusion, sometimes looking at his dragon with either confusion, fear or admiration; sometimes a mix of both, sometimes it was simply just indifference. But the way these people stared at him was different. Hiccup paid them little attention.

They had nothing to say about Hiccup's appearance when they themselves had peculiar attire that he had never seen before, in books, during his adventures, Archipelago or beyond.

His heart was pounding at a less-than-steady pace, panic flowing through his veins; he was sure Toothless was close to him just half an hour before. Where he went, he had no idea.

"Excuse me, please move," Hiccup muttered past people, squeezing through them, his mind barely processing the fact he had almost made someone lose balance as he pushed through the crowd. He had barely heard someone say, "Why would he wear that thing? Especially during the warm spring, too…" He didn't know where he was going, for one of the fewest times in his life, Hiccup didn't have a plan.

Or maybe he did. A plan with two steps only: Find Toothless. Fly out of this strange place immediately.

"Toothless!" he yelled. "Toothless! Where are you, bud?" The strange glances from the people made him stop shouting for now. Of course, no-one would know the context. After all, this wasn't Berk. He was sure his roar call to Toothless would cause more confusion.

"Hey!" Someone called at him. "Come back here! You dropped my bag and dropped my books! I can't bend over because of my back! Come back here! Now!"

Hiccup wanted to move on, but looking back, seeing the man's face, red with anger, he sighed and went back, with passers-by and fellow shopkeepers stopping to look at the commotion. There were books scattered all over the ground, with strange titles, some having words he had never heard before.

"Excuse me," he said quickly, as he picked up the books at a speed that he had never seen himself be capable of before, "have you seen Toothless?"

"Toothless? What the hell's a Toothless?" the man said, in irritation. As Hiccup placed the last few books back in the bag and returned it back to the owner, he explained. "My dragon. He's big, and black and has a saddle on his back. One tail-fin is red, the other fin is red with a white symbol like this-" he gestured to the red head on his right shoulder plate of his armour, but the man looked at him as if he was mad.

"Dragon? Dragon!?" he spat at him. "Are you trying to waste my time here? Spending too much time with your head up in the clouds of pretend? Dragons don't exist, boy!" He walked away, cursing and muttering, "Dragon? Idiot boy… dragons don't exist…"

Dragons don't exist? His heart almost skipped a beat at that. Of course they do… I was with Toothless just a while back before…

Down in the underground, a while back, Viking Chief and Night Fury had found themselves there, in a dark tunnelled area that was cold, and let off a horrible smell from the murky river flowing downwards.

Then the shouts came. The shouts of men that didn't sound like Vikings, yet Hiccup could understand them. It was the same tongue as his, the same language he spoke, yet it sounded so… foreign in Hiccup's ears.

"Let's go, Toothless," Hiccup had whispered nervously to Toothless, and they had run a little further from the sounds of yelling. "There! There! I can hear them!" Then came sounds… sounds Hiccup had never heard before. They didn't sound like a dragon reading a fiery blast then releasing it with all his might, but it was just as loud, but sharper. Blam.

"Wait here, Toothless," Hiccup had readied Inferno, the Dragon Blade, and carefully, he stepped forward. "I'll try to buy us some time."

"They're here! They're close!" he could hear the shouting. "Intruders!"

"Could they be locals? After all, it's not uncommon for someone to fall into the sewers on accident-"

"That big beast thing over there looks like a local, doesn't he?" Hiccup heard another shout sarcastically behind him. Wait, behind? To his surprise, he could hear more shouting. Growing louder. Growing closer.

"Toothless!" Hiccup yelled. The dragon was firing plasma blasts behind him, yelling again. "What the hell was that?"

"Is anyone burned?"

"There's a fire! Put it out!"

"No, do that later! Get that thing first! The big black one!"

"NO!" Hiccup yelled. "TOOTHLESS!" If they hurt him… they'll pay.

Blam. Hiccup halted at the sound and turned. There was a group of men in blue suits all standing behind him. Ordering him to stop. "Stop right there," he heard a man with a gruff voice say. He held a strange metal thing in his hand, almost in an 'L' shape, pointing at Hiccup's chest. "One move and I'll stop your heart."

"Lower that sword," another continued. "It's not safe to have a weapon like that on an unauthorised civilian."

They had spoken strange words. Normally, whenever Hiccup brought out that sword, the fiery blade incited fear and danger into his enemies, knowing it was not an ordinary blade. Now, no fear was seen upon any man's face in the group. They seemed so confident they could beat Hiccup and bring him down. Biting back a curse, Hiccup sighed and deactivated the sword, but made no move to store it away.

"But-" he stopped when he heard Toothless' roar. He turned on instinct, ready to go after his best friend, but he heard the blue-suited-man again. "Move, and I promise it will be the last thing you ever do."

"What did he do to you?" Hiccup shot at him. "He hasn't done anything! He won't hurt you if you don't threaten him!"

"It will cause damage to you and if it makes its way above the sewers the beast will harm others and cause injury, if not the worst. The last thing we need is chaos among Central."

Central. So this place was underneath this Central. But what the man said processed faster through his brain. How dare, how dare he make assumptions about Toothless. Toothless would never do any of that.

"We'll escort you to the surface, and we'll send some men to take you to the hospital."

"Hospital?" Hiccup repeated, trying out a word that he had never heard before. It was a bizarre, exotic name in his mouth, almost as if he was trying to taste it, checking to see if it felt right. He was unsure.

"Yes, the hospital," the soldier snapped. "You must be having a mental illness, to find your way here and think the beast is your own." He stared at Hiccup's prosthetic foot. "We'll have the doctors check that as well. It doesn't look like automail."

"I'm not… what on earth is automail…" his voice wavered away as he felt an iron grip that rested on his shoulder then disappeared. "Don't even think about escaping our grasp. If you do, we have the right to gun you down."

Whatever the last three words were, Hiccup assumed they were not good.

Possibly, he thought as he walked forward, it means death. He echoed Fishlegs' words five years ago in his head: Chances of survival are dwindling into the single digits now…

His hand closed around the hilt of Inferno. If I manage to cause a diversion with the Zippleback gas… I can cover their sight of vision and get to Toothless…

He made a show of dropping Inferno close to his right foot, opening the canister holder, and quickly grabbed the Zippleback canister and placed it in and put the Monstrous Nightmare gel back where the previous canister had been on his boot, then picked up the hilt and moved forward again. Some of the group seemed irritated with the hold-up, muttering under their breaths. Hiccup ignored them. Clearly, they didn't seem to notice.

As they walked further, he heard Toothless' plasma blasts again, and a faint shout, "He's getting away! Get him!" Hiccup smiled. Toothless hadn't given up yet.

"Wait! He's heading into the surface?"

"What? HOW?"

"He's blasting his way through, sir… he's getting away! He's in Central now!"

"Which part are we in?"

"Wait… the north! He's heading further north of the city… people are less concentrated there but we have to stop him!"

"We'll get backup there sooner or later…" one of the soldiers muttered, then turned to Hiccup. "See that over there? You climb up until you see a plate and you push that away and into the city," he pointed, to a ladder heading up. "Two of our men will go with you," he spoke slowly, as if he thought Hiccup was some stupid oaf. "Up the ladder and to the hospital to get you checked."

Checked? For what?... Oh, right. Apparently I'm crazy. Hiccup sighed. If Toothless had already reached the surface, there would be no choice but to follow him up as well.

Hiccup grasped Inferno's hilt tighter. He heard the familiar clicks and clacks of the sword as he readied the attack. Gas began to spurt out of the bottom of the hilt, and some of the soldiers, covered their noses from the surprise attack. "What-"

He crept towards the ladder, glancing at the soldiers and their lack of vision in the green gas cloud. He clicked the last button. BOOM. There were shrieks, yells and chaos among the group; Hiccup took this time to climb as fast as he could, shoving the round metal circle and into the sunlight. He sighed… he had escaped. For now.

Finding Toothless and escaping this place was the next step.

He looked up at the sky. Surely the gods enjoyed having Hiccup as a form of entertainment for them. He quietly whispered, Please help me find Toothless, and sped away.

There were yellow strips blocking his way, creating a barrier from one side to another. Hiccup stopped immediately, confused. On the other side, he could hear people shouting. Foreign shouts, sharp sounds that sounded like blam.

Just like the soldiers in the underground.

Muttering apologies and "excuse me's", Hiccup pushed past people and headed to the front, hearing curious and confused people mutter, "What's happening?" "Is this a crime scene?"

He couldn't see Toothless, but from Hiccup's experience from running around, Central was a big city. Toothless could be anywhere beyond those lines.

"Please move away!" Hiccup froze as he saw another blue-suited-man with black hair and strange clear circles in front of his eyes making 'go away' gestures with his hands. "It's dangerous!"

"What's happening, Mr Soldier?" A woman asked loudly.

"There's a big black dangerous beast on the loose!" he said. "Our troops are doing their best to capture it! Most of the population have been evacuated temporarily! All will be okay!" He looked around the crowd and smirked. "While you are all worried, let me remove your worries and keep you satisfied with pictures of my wife Gracia and my daughter Elicia! Aren't they the most precious people on this earth?"

Hiccup sighed. Either the man hadn't noticed him at all as he moved his gaze around the crowd, or he did recognise him and not bother to tell him. Or maybe he never was there in the underground. For all Hiccup knew, there were too much of these blue-suited soldiers in this city. Probably as much as the whole population of Berk.

He glanced at the soldier again. He seemed too occupied in showing different parts of the crowd several 'pictures' (which seemed like small rectangles and squares of some kind with tiny figures Hiccup couldn't see, as he slowly moved further away), and crawled under the yellow strips.

Hiccup sighed. No-one had noticed him. He thanked Thor for that.

If the man was right, the blue-coated soldiers were everywhere, searching for Toothless. It was Hiccup's job to find him before they did. Who knows what would happen to Toothless? Who knows what they'll do?

He remembered that the soldiers were probably after him too, the 'crazy boy with strange clothes and a fire sword who thinks the big black dragon is his friend.' Maybe the first thing to do was to disguise himself…

There were a few soldiers concentrated in the area Hiccup was in, so he knew that Toothless was probably somewhere else, a little further. He entered a small building with its door left open, completely empty of people and other living things.

A sign lay on the door, saying, Clothes Shop, and Hiccup saw rows of clothes hanging on poles and strange thin objects. So this is what the people of this place where… It was strange, Hiccup knew, but if he wanted to blend in, he mused, he would have to start by wearing the clothes they wore.

He quickly took some clothes that he deemed suitable and hid to a dark corner of the room and changed out of his flight-suit and his leather armour and the tunic underneath, replacing them with a white shirt, with strange circles on one side and small gaps in the other (then Hiccup had realised that it was probably how you wore the shirt, putting the circles in through the gaps), under a black jacket lined with red and black pants. He glanced at the prosthetic foot. There were no shoes in the shop.

"Well, I'll just have to deal with it," Hiccup whispered to himself, as he emptied the contents of a small bag with two straps on the back and placed his Viking clothes in it. He slung one strap on his shoulder and raced out. It was a strange bag, it opened with a strange rectangle that created a large hole showing the insides of the bag.

This place is too strange, Hiccup thought, biting his lip. His hand went to Inferno, in his pant pocket. He stopped in a nearby narrow street to take his breath. At least Toothless is around here, he noted. That's the first step out of this place –

"Please evacuate the area," Hiccup widened his eyes in shock and looked up. A person in a blue-suit, pointing the black metal 'L' at him, like the one the soldiers in the underground had except there was one… in each hand. A woman this time, however and Hiccup was sure he had only seen men in the group last time. She had long blonde hair clipped up to the back of her head and brown eyes. "It's not safe here."

Hiccup's hand moved to Inferno again as he stood, then stopped. If they were looking for him, using Inferno was the last thing he was supposed to do. "What's happening?" he asked nervously. There was nowhere to run. He rested on a dead end, and the woman was blocking the exit.

"There's a strange beast on the loose and it has the potential to harm someone," the woman said. "It has already harmed some of our soldiers. Wait here." She looked behind her and called, "COLONEL MUSTANG!"

So she doesn't know about me, he thought.

"What is it?" Hiccup heard a deep, low voice approach, and another soldier had entered onto the scene. He looked about his mid or late twenties, black hair and black eyes, with a black coat slung over his blue soldier suit, gloved hands in his pockets. He had a firm, stoic look on his face. The face of a leader that Hiccup had seen on his father plenty of times.

"There's a person here who didn't join in the evacuation," the woman said.

"Really?" the man – the one the woman had called Colonel Mustang – raised an eyebrow. "We checked the whole area and the only humans in the taped-off area are soldiers." Colonel Mustang stared at Hiccup. "Are you a soldier? If not, why didn't you leave with the others?" His eyes travelled from Hiccup to the bag on his back. "Hmm… or maybe… he snuck in under the barrier." He placed a hand on his forehead. "Hughes was meant to keep a watch there… or was he too busy with those family pictures of his?"

The woman looked at Hiccup and said, "Open your bag."

Hiccup's heart began to beat fast. Sweat appeared on his brow. "My bag?"

"There's a fair number of petty thieves in Central. Some of them could be daring enough to take advantage of the chaos and sneak in to steal something. Now, open your bag," Colonel Mustang commanded.

"I haven't been stealing!" Hiccup protested. "I'm… a traveller. These are just my belongings!"

If they knew it was the 'crazy boy with strange clothes and a fire sword who thinks the big black dragon is his friend', it would be over. Unless he brought out the Inferno and ran – but then there was the prospect of being 'gunned down', as the soldiers from the underground put it.

"Don't even think of running," Mustang said as if reading Hiccup's thoughts, "or we will shoot you down. Just open the bag. The more you hold back, the more I think you're hiding something."

Hiccup's hands began to shake. He bit his lip. But then again, there was the possibility of them not recognising him, just looking one glance at his strange clothes then allowing him to go.

He opened the bag slowly, revealing his green tunic at the top, the armour and flightsuit underneath. Mustang leant down, looking inside the bag. "Those are mine," Hiccup quickly explained.

"Well, you can't find any clothes like these here in Central, maybe even in all of Amestris…" Mustang said, trailing off. Amestris? That must've been the name of the country Hiccup was in. "And what's this?"

Dah dah dah, I'm dead, Hiccup thought anxiously as Mustang gestured to the leather armour in the bag. "This looks strange, doesn't it?"

"That's mine," Hiccup said without thinking. There was no way out. If he said it was his, they would question him. If he said it wasn't, he'd get questioned for theft. Oh, gods of Asgard, Hiccup prayed, his heart picking up speed once again, Please help me… "Hawkeye," Mustang said, turning to the woman, "what do you think?"

There was a pause, as the woman called Hawkeye peered into the bag and frowned. "Colonel Mustang…" she whispered into the man's ear, and he nodded and asked Hiccup, "Were you the boy who was seen with the beast in Central's sewers? He was seen wearing black leather with a red dragon head on the side and brown and green clothing underneath. Some reports say he holds a sword with a flaming blade and escaped into the city. Is this true? Is this you?"

I'm twenty years old… he was growing nervous. His age meant nothing when this could mean Toothless was still in danger.

"Yes, that's me, but I had to if I had any hope of finding my dragon!" Hiccup said, finally. "That big black beast you're all talking about is my dragon, Toothless. And you're all after him because you think he's dangerous! He's not! He'll only attack those who want to hurt him or me…" He sighed. Mustang and Hawkeye stared at him, surely disbelieving, Hiccup knew. There was really no proof to back up the story, especially in a place where the existence of dragons was nothing but a myth.

"Alright," Mustang said finally, and he sat down. "It's just like what we alchemists say. Equivalent exchange. You fill us in on the current situation and how you ended up in Amestris, then we'll help you get your dragon back."

Being honest, Hiccup did not know how he and Toothless had arrived in Amestris. There was no complexity to the story; they had simply woken up in the underground of this new land (it seemed as if they were called sewers, Mustang had explained to him. At least Hiccup now knew the reason for the smell).

"I don't understand," Mustang said. "Why would soldiers just be there? I mean, no soldier patrols the sewers without good reason, and why would a large group be there in the beginning?"

Hiccup shrugged. "I don't know. They were just there." The young Viking continued to explain how he had created a diversion with his sword, and climbed up into Central, then went through the yellow-strip barrier and changed into clothing that would be considered 'normal', up to the time he was cornered by the same two soldiers who were sitting next to him, listening to his side of the story.

"So that's why your shirt isn't buttoned up properly," Mustang grinned. "You've never worn anything like it."

But Hiccup was still wary. After all, there was still the chance they could betray him. But he went red with embarrassment. He decided to fix it later. He stood and said, "I've told you everything. Now let's go and find Toothless!"

Thank you for reading. Chapter 2 will be released in about two days, please stay tuned! Reviews and constructive criticism welcome, even though this is a short two-shot.